Katia Mitova, Ph.D.
Graham School, University of Chicago
The Makers of the Odyssey: Divine, Mortal, and Authorial*
The emergence of the Iliad and the Odyssey, around 725-675 BCE, coincided with the period of
transition between oral and written composition.1 Oral poetry, defined by Albert B. Lord as “recomposition in performance,”2 was inherently metafictional, in the sense that the bards and their
audiences were aware of the existence of different versions of the stories they told. In each act of
re-composition the bards made choices, albeit not final choices. By contrast, because of the
finality of their choices, the makers of the first written poems must have been even more acutely
aware of the many possibilities of the material and, conceivably, tempted to incorporate this
metafictional awareness into the versions they decided to preserve in written form. Such seems
to be the case of the Odyssey – a story about Odysseus’ homecoming and, at the same time, a
story about the story about Odysseus’ homecoming.
In addition, the Odyssey seems to be consciously competing with other nostos stories
and, on a more general level, can be read as a story about the art of storytelling. As Laura Slatkin
points out, the Odyssey “incorporates an explicit awareness of the creative tension of
composition, an awareness of the existence of possibilities that could become other songs; and
this implies a claim that alternative treatments have been rejected and that the path taken to
create this song, the one being sung – our Odyssey – is the ultimate and preemptive path.”3 In
other words, the Odyssey has its own mêtis, which Slatkin links mostly to cunning Odysseus’
* Delivered as a lecture at Retreat on Homer’s Odyssey, April 24-26, 2015, Fontana, WI. Sponsored by Basic
Program of Liberal Education for Adults, Graham School, University of Chicago. Revised material from Katia
Mitova, Erotic Uncertainty: Toward a Poetic Psychology of Literary Creativity. Ph.D. diss. (University of Chicago,
2005).
1
Alfred Heubeck, in his “General Introduction” to Alfred Heubeck, Stephanie West, and J. B. Hainsworth, A
Commentary on Homer’s (Odyssey Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988), v. I, 3-23, offers a survey of the Homeric
question and the arguments of the Analysts and the Unitarians. I side with the scholars who believe that the Homeric
epics are a result of a long oral tradition, but were composed in a written form. Exactly how, when, and where this
happened, we can only speculate. A. B. Lord, in Epic Singers and Oral Tradition (Ithaca and London: Cornell
University Press, 1991, 45-8), following Milman Parry’s theory, entertains the idea that the epics are a product of
dictation by an illiterate bard to a scribe. However, such collaboration could be quite creative and undergo numerous
redactions, which would lead to a much more sophisticated and elaborate written version than any inspired oral
performance could produce. My reading of the Odyssey suggests a single unifying creative mind responsible for its
composition. This mind could have been male or female, as Andrew Dolby argues in Rediscovering Homer (New
York, London: W. W. Norton & Company, 2006). The material, however, obviously comes from different, older
oral sources, including folktale motifs (e.g., “the returning husband” or “the wedding contest”). Jasper Griffin, in
Homer: The Odyssey (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 24, calls the Homeric epics “the end product
of an oral tradition.” Eric A. Hevelock’s, in The Muse Learns How to Write: Reflections on Orality and Literacy
from Antiquity to the Present (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1986), discusses the uniquely Greek
transition from oral to written language. His chapter on “The Special Theory of Greek Orality” ends with the
following conclusion: “The Muse, as she learned how to write, had to turn away from the living panorama of
experience and its ceaseless flow, but as long as she remained Greek, she could not entirely forget it,” 97.
2
Albert Bates Lord, Epic Singers and Oral Tradition, 76.
3
Laura M. Slatkin, “Composition by Theme and the Mêtis of the Odyssey,” Reading the Odyssey: Selected
Interpretive Essays, ed. by Seth L. Schein (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1996), 228.
Katia Mitova, The Makers of the Odyssey
2
unique role as a narrator of his own story. The poet of the Odyssey, however, presents the story
of the epic as a fulfillment of Athena’s ingenious plan for Odysseus’ return to Ithaca. Does then
the creative collaboration between Athena and Odysseus reflect the creative process and the
metafictionality of the poet’s creative situation and, if so, how is this manifested in the text of the
Odyssey?
1. The Muse and the Poet
The poet’s request, in the last line of the Odyssey’s proem, that the Muse should begin from
some point onwards (tôn hamothen ge, thea, thugater Dios, eipe kai hêmin, i,10), may imply
arbitrariness. This arbitrariness, however, is only a “rhetorical ploy,” as Irene de Jong argues,4
and a reminder of the existence of other versions against which the Odyssey expects to be
judged. If the Muse herself chose the beginning of the Odyssey, it must indeed be a
“masterstroke.”5 Horace, after Aristotle in the Poetics, suggests that the best beginning is in the
middle of the action, and praises Homer for starting his epics in medias res.6 But in what does
the masterfulness of this choice consist? The critics propose different answers to this question.
H. D. F. Kitto sees Homer’s beginning in medias res as especially appropriate for the Greek
tradition that tends to avoid dramatic surprises.7 Jenny Strauss Clay, who reads the Odyssey as an
epic about divine justice, points out that this beginning “signals the end of Athena’s anger.”8
George E. Dimock notices that “[b]y choosing to begin her story with the image of Odysseus’
captivity to Calypso, the Muse identifies obscurity as Odysseus’ prime enemy.”9 Steve Reece
sees this beginning as an opportunity for “the technique of flashback [that gives] special force to
the Odyssey.”10 Victoria Pedrick points to the discrepancy in the proem between the bard’s
suggestion to the Muse to choose a point in the action he has just summarized and the Muse’s
actual choice. The action’s summary in the invocation focuses on the travels of Odysseus and the
perishing of his companions, while the epic’s narrative begins and ends with Ithaca and
Odysseus’ personal story begins with Calypso. According to Perdick’s explication, the Muse
corrects and supplements the traditional nostos story.11 Finally, A. P. David, who draws a parallel
between the structure of the Odyssey and the circular dance, in which there is a correct way of
returning by turning, believes that the beginning of the story is indeed random; what really
matters is the circularity of the movement and the turns in it without which it is not possible to
move forward.12
4
Irene J. F. De Jong, A Narratological Commentary on the Odyssey (Cambridge, Mass.: Cambridge University
Press, 2001), 7-8.
5
H. D. F. Kitto, Poiesis: Structure and Thought (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press), 1966,
122.
6
Horace, “Ars Poetica,” Epistles, v. II, ed. by Niall Rudd (Cambridge, Mass.: Cambridge University Press, 1989), p.
62, lines 119-52.
7
H. D. F. Kitto, Poiesis, 123. He says that “Homer’s is not a world in which anything can happen; it’s one in which
certain things will happen, even if we have to wait for a long time,” 131.
8
Jenny Strauss Clay, The Wrath of Athena: Gods and Men in the Odyssey (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton
University Press, 1983), 51.
9
George E. Dimock, The Unity of the Odyssey (Amherst: The University of Massachusetts Press, 1989), 15.
10
Steve Reece, The Stranger’s Welcome: Oral Theory and the Aesthetics of the Homeric Hospitality (Ann Arbor:
The University of Michigan Press, 1993), 189.
11
Victoria Pedrick, “The Muse Corrects: The Opening of the Odyssey,” Yale Classical Studies, XXIX 1992, 39-62.
12
A. P. David, The Dance of the Muses: Choral Theory and Ancient Greek Poetics (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2006).
2
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3
All these explanations of the Muse’s choice seem compelling and to a great extent
complementary. However, a reading of the Odyssey as a work of implicit metafiction allows for
yet another approach to this question. From such a perspective, the story can be seen as
beginning when and where the inventing of its plot begins; that is, when there is enough material
for it (Odysseus’ ten years of wandering after the sack of Troy), and in the realm of the eternal
gods, where human fate is known.
It seems that this moment – when the story is just ripe enough to be organized as a
literary plot, neither overripe nor unripe – occurs if the accumulated material makes stasis or
indeterminacy no longer possible: an unequivocal pattern emerges from the chaos of
possibilities. Both the Iliad and the Odyssey are concerned with the breaking of a situation of
stasis or indeterminacy. More than half of the Iliad describes the relative stasis during Achilles’
withdrawal from the battle. The narrative, of course, is going on, but from Achilles’ perspective,
action has stopped. The Odyssey, in turn, jumpstarts with resolving a situation of indeterminacy
that is described in an economical fashion, through the characters’ speeches. In Ithaca, Penelope,
uncertain of Odysseus’ fate, weeps for him night and day, but neither re-marries nor
unequivocally rejects her suitors; on Ogygia, Calypso can neither keep Odysseus forever, for he
has rejected her offer of immortality, nor send him safely home because her island is far away
from the populated world. These situations cannot continue indefinitely. In Ithaca, Penelope’s
weaving-unweaving trick would not fool the suitors forever. Telemachus is coming of age –
already a “bearded man” (xviii.269), theoretically the lord of the house in his own right. In
addition, paradoxically, if Penelope is to be faithful to Odysseus’ own request, she now has to
wed another and leave the house (xviii.270). Time seems to have stopped in Ithaca, where for
twenty years the assembly did not gather at all, but the number 20 itself suggests an end of the
cycle or of two ten-year cycles and a new beginning. Similarly, Odysseus – probably the only
creature in Calypso’s world to whom time does matter – cannot remain on Ogygia much longer
as a mortal. Thus, resentfully yet readily, the nymph obeys Zeus’ command to let Odysseus go.
This is the end of indeterminacy on the islands of Ithaca and Ogygia.13 Time is running again and
the story begins to unfold.
The Muse, as the Odyssey’s first mover, has chosen a specific possibility of order that
emerges from the chaos of the creative material provided by the oral tradition. This order is the
fulfillment of Odysseus’ fate: after ten years of war and ten years of wandering, to return to his
native island as the only survivor of the Ithacan fleet. However, the Muse of the Odyssey, unlike
that of the Iliad, is never called upon by the poet after the opening invocation. Her role in the
Odyssey seems different from that in the Iliad. The characters of the two bards in the Odyssey,
Demodocus and Phemius, provide some clues about this. First, the Muse has the power to give
both good and evil, with the implication that an extraordinary gift for song may necessarily go
hand in hand with suffering:
13
Shakespeare uses the same model in his last great play, The Tempest. Prospero cannot sustain his world of magic
anymore because Miranda, like Telemachus, is coming of age. All her life, she has known two men only, her father
and Caliban. Prospero, who has raised and educated Miranda – in a sense, has created her – is no Pygmalion. To him
incest is not an option. Populating the island with little “Calibans” is utterly unthinkable. On the other hand,
Ferdinand, the son of the King of Naples, is a suitable mate for Miranda and just the right age. The Tempest, like the
Odyssey, begins with an emerging possibility. This possibility, however, becomes a probability and a good
beginning of the story only by employing some kind of conjuring organizing power – Prospero’s magic or Athena’s
divine craft.
3
Katia Mitova, The Makers of the Odyssey
4
kêrux d' enguthen êlthen agôn eriêron aoidon,
ton peri mous' ephilêse, didou d' agathon te kakon te:
ophthalmôn men amerse, didou d' hêdeian aoidên. (viii.62-4)
In came the herald now,
leading along the faithful bard the Muse adored
above all others, true, but her gifts were mixed
with good and evil both: she stripped him of sight,
but gave the man the power of stirring, rapturous song.14
Second, the Muse teaches some minstrels, like Demodocus, how to sing (viii.480-1); others, like
Phemius, are self-taught autodidaktos, but the Muse has given them the potential for this
(xxii.347). Third, by moving the minstrel’s heart (i.346-7) the Muse inspires the him to begin a
particular song (viii.73). Fourth, the Muse or, as Odysseus suggests, Apollo (viii.488), helps
with ordering the song. A well-ordered (kata kosmon, viii.489 or kata moiran viii.496) song
testifies to the singer’s divine gift. Finally, “via their association with the Muses, who are
witness to everything in history,”15 minstrels are able to sing as if they were eyewitnesses16 of the
event or had firsthand knowledge of it (viii.491).
The first point is related to what was perceived as “inexplicable, and therefore numinous,
in the ability of the singer.”17 The four subsequent points suggest divine involvement with some
degree of human contribution: the singer, if loved by the Muse, can learn on his own, that is,
from other singers, and in competition with them;18 can choose what to sing; can order his song
kata kosmon (viii.141, 489);19 and can tell a story that competes in vividness with an eyewitness’
report.
One may speculate to what extent the poet of the Odyssey, whom we instinctively tend to
envisage as another Demodocus, blindness included, thought of himself in such terms. Cedric H.
Whitman’s statement that the language of the Odyssey is not younger than that of the Iliad, “but
its motivating artistic concern is younger, and so is its idea of form”20 could be also applied to
the self-awareness of the poet of the Odyssey. Like the traditional bard, he appears absent or at
least invisible. His voice21 seems to be even less individualized than that of the Iliad’s narrator.
But perhaps the poet of this “younger” text is using other devices to make his presence known?
14
Homer, The Odyssey, tr. by Robert Fagles (New York: Penguin Books, 1996), 193. (This translation was used at
the Odyssey retreat, where a shorter version of this paper was delivered.)
15
Irene de Jong, A Narratological Commentary…, 214.
16
The Muses’ immortality and, consequently, their firsthand knowledge of all events is crucial because the epic
themes are always concerned with the past. See Andrew Ford, Homer: The Poetry of the Past (Ithaca and London:
Cornell University Press, 1992), 60-1. Samuel Eliot Basset, in The Poetry of Homer (first edition 1938, Lanham:
Lexington Books, 2003), 31, points out that “The Muse of Homer becomes the authentic Voice of the Past,” thus
producing “the illusion of historicity.”
17
J. B. Hainsworth, “Commentary on Books V-VIII,” A Commentary on Homer’s Odyssey, v. I, 377.
18
Irene de Jong suggests that Phemius’ “‘autodidactism,’ even more prominently than the Muse-invocations,
camouflages a singer’s actual training by other singers.” A Narratological Commentary…, 539. Also see her
comment on the invocation to the Muse on pp. 5-6.
19
James Redfield, in Nature and Culture in the Iliad (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1994), 39-40,
points out that the same phrase, kata kosmon, is used to characterize the good work of an orator Iliad, II, 213-4.
20
Cedric H. Whitman, Homer and the Heroic Tradition (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1958), 293.
21
Irene de Jong describes the Odyssean narrator as external, omniscient, omnipresent, undramatized, and covert. A
Narratological Commentary…, 5.
4
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T. E. Lawrence (aka Lawrence of Arabia), to whom we owe a most creative prose
translation of the Odyssey, tried to deduce Homer’s personality “from his self-betrayal in the
work” and found “a bookworm, no longer young, living from home, a mainlander, city-bred and
domestic. Married, but not exclusively, a dog-lover, often hungry and thirsty, dark-haired. Fond
of poetry, a great if uncritical reader of the Iliad, with limited sensuous range but an exact
eyesight which gave him all his pictures.”22 To be sure, Lawrence’s image of Homer testifies,
above all, to the translator’s need to identify not only with the original’s voice but also with the
author’s personality, which he had to invent almost ex nihilo. Yet whence a “bookworm”? One
of the few certain things about the poet of the Odyssey is that he knew the preceding oral
tradition well and was concerned with his own position in it. As for Demodocus and Phemius,
Irad Malkin points out that they are “the bard’s ‘fantasy bards,’ singing at a time when the world
was younger, in the age of heroes.”23 The composer of the Iliad has assumed the role of such an
ancient, “fantasy bard.” The poet of the Odyssey, however, appears to be different from
Demodocus and Phemius. He, too, had a long oral tradition at his disposal, which meant
abundant material for composing new songs and an opportunity to teach himself by studying the
tradition. However, the finality of choice that written form imposes must have made him feel
responsible for his creative decisions more as an author than as a mediator between the Muse and
the audience. How did he deal with the new situation that distanced him from the traditional
source of poetic inspiration and made him immediately in charge of his song?
In keeping with the oral tradition, the poet of the Odyssey chose to be present in the
narrative in a discreet way. However, he projected his own creative powers, enhanced by the
Muse, onto the epic’s main divine character, Athena, and its main human character, Odysseus.
This allows the poet to tell the story of Odysseus’ return as it is happening and not as a past
event. Athena, like a Muse, displays constant awareness of the nostos stories’ context and is
responsible for the plot of Odysseus’ own story. Odysseus, in turn, provides his extraordinary
human experience and, by fulfilling his fate, helps Athena to realize her plan. The emphasis on
Odysseus’ character as a storyteller could be seen as a result of the poet’s identification with
him. It supplies an additional insight into the process of storymaking. To be sure, Athena and
Odysseus should be seen as the interior makers of the Odyssey only implicitly. They are, above
all, leading characters of the epic. Considering their double function as directors-actors in the
Odyssey, however, allows for better understanding of the story’s twists and turns.24
2. Athena and Odysseus
The projection of the poet’s creative powers onto the secondary movers of the plot is made
possible by certain unique qualities of Athena and Odysseus. Both of them were already
22
Homer, The Odyssey, tr. by T. E. Lawrence (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), vi.
Irad Malkin, The Return of Odysseus (Berkeley: University of California Press), 1998, 51.
24
To my knowledge, such an approach has not been systematically applied to the Odyssey. Pietro Pucci, in Odysseus
Polutropos: Intertextual Readings in the Odyssey and the Iliad (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1987),
115-6, talks about the split role of Athena – and to a great extent of Odysseus – as characters that belong
“simultaneously to the world dialogue of the characters and to the world dialogue of the narrator-reader… While
[Athena] still belongs to the world of serious epic orthodoxy, she also belongs to the world of the specific fiction her
role helps to create. By flaunting this role, the Odyssey exhibits that light, irreverent, teasing tone that convinced
scholars of two generations ago that the poem was imbued with ironic and Ionic rationalism.”
23
5
Katia Mitova, The Makers of the Odyssey
6
multifaceted figures in the tradition,25 but the Odyssey accentuates their craftiness and creativity.
Just in the middle of the epic, when Odysseus is finally brought to his Ithaca by the Phaeacian
ship, the most amazing encounter between a god and a mortal takes place. Odysseus quickly
makes up his first Cretan story to provoke sympathy in the young prince-like shepherd, who – as
the audience already knows – is Athena disguised. Disarmed by Odysseus’ inventiveness, the
goddess strokes him with her hand and changes herself into a woman, beautiful, tall, and skilled
in splendid handiwork demas d' êïkto gunaiki / kalêi te megalêi te kai aglaa erga iduiêi, xiii.2889 – probably the closest to her true divine looks, inaccessible to a mortal. And she utters words
of appreciation that no other Greek hero has heard:
kerdaleos k' eiê kai epiklopos hos se parelthoi
en pantessi doloisi, kai ei theos antiaseie.
schetlie, poikilomêta, dolôn at', ouk ar' emelles,
oud' en sêi per eôn gaiêi, lêxein apataôn
muthôn te klopiôn, hoi toi pedothen philoi eisin.
all' age, mêketi tauta legômetha, eidotes amphô
kerde', epei su men essi brotôn och' aristos hapantôn
boulêi kai muthoisin, egô d' en pasi theoisi
mêti te kleomai kai kerdesin. (xiii.291-9)
Any man—any god who met you—would have to be
some champion lying cheat to get past you
for all-round craft and guile! You terrible man,
foxy, ingenious, never tired of twists and tricks—
so, not even here, on native soil, would you give up
those wily tales that warm the cockles of your heart!
Come, enough of this now. We’re both old hands
at the art of intrigue. Here among mortal men
you’re far the best at tactics, spinning yarns,
and I am famous among the gods for wisdom,
cunning wiles, too.26
Athena and Odysseus are the perfect partners in the cunning arts kerdea. Indeed, their
association in the Odyssey is distinct from any other liaison between a god and a mortal in
classical literature. It is not based on kinship like the association between Thetis and Achilles in
the Iliad or between Aphrodite and Aeneas, in Virgil’s Aeneid, and it is not explicitly sexual as
are like other relationships between immortals and mortals. Admittedly, Athena helps Heracles
to accomplish some of his heroic feats – for instance, to remove the skin from the Nemean Lion
or to defeat the Stymphalian Birds. But this association is episodic. The same can be said about
25
Marcel Detienne and Jean-Pierre Vernant, in Cunning Intelligence in Greek Culture and Society first French
edition 1974, tr. by Janet Lloyd (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 177-258, outline more
than a dozen facets of Athena as a goddess of many minds and many devices polumêtis and poluboulos. Paul
Friedrich’s comparison of Athena with Aphrodite, Hera, and Artemis, in The Meaning of Aphrodite (Chicago and
London: University of Chicago Press, 1978), shows a continuum of qualities and activities broader than that of any
other goddess.
26
The Odyssey, tr. by Robert Fagles, 296.
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Athena’s support for the Achaean leaders in the Iliad: she interferes to restrain Achilles, as he is
about to slay Agamemnon (I.194-8), guards Menelaus (IV.128) and Odysseus (XI.437), and
mounts the car of Diomedes (V.837), but she never collaborates with any hero in the way she
does with Odysseus in the Odyssey. The relationship between Athena and Odysseus is based on a
quality of mind that they share: mêtis, or cunning intelligence. This relationship can be defined
as a partnership because of its complementariness. Athena and Odysseus seduce each other’s
minds. Odysseus response to Athena’s speech is telling: “I think,” he says, “you are teasing me
when you say that – to beguile my mind” se de kertomeousan oïô / taut’ agoreuemenai, hin'
emas phrenas êperopeusêis (xiii.326-7).27 But the goddess’ mind has already been beguiled by
Odysseus’ instant invention. Obviously, Odysseus needs divine help to return to Ithaca. But
Athena, too, needs Odysseus’ collaboration to fulfill her plan. They meet halfway: the goddess
creates or alters the circumstances that suit her goal; Odysseus takes care of the rest of the
details, and he acts. Tellingly, Athena always interferes with human affairs disguised as a minor
character. She almost never assumes the likeness of Odysseus or any other major hero in the
epic28 – this would bring inconsistencies of character into the story. Odysseus, in turn, even if
doubtful at times especially when urged to slaughter the suitors almost single-handedly,
faithfully partners with Athena in her plot.
Successful plotting, the Greeks seem to have believed, requires collaboration. In the
Iliad, Diomedes volunteers to join Odysseus on his nocturnal spying mission because, as he says
“when two walk together, one discerns before the other the advantage kerdos to be seized; one
can see it on one’s own, too, but one man’s sight is shorter and his mêtis lighter” (X.224-6).29
Athena, of course, is not just a god but a daughter of Metis, so her mêtis should be anything but
“light.” However, since Athena of the Odyssey functions as a projection of the poet’s authorial
persona, her mêtis has acquired a human dimension and has become compatible with Odysseus’
mêtis.
More than any other act of making something new, storymaking, because of the
unlimited potential of its material, requires the multiplicity and diversity of mêtis – mêtis
pantoiê, as Nestor calls it in the Iliad (XXIII.314). Odysseus’ main mêtis-related epithets,
polumêtis, polumêchanos, poikilomêtês, and polutropos all suggest multiplicity of mind, or many
wiles or devices. As Pietro Pucci points out, the epithet polutropos defines Odysseus in an
intentionally ambiguous way as a man of many journeys, of many turns, and of many tropes
figures of speech, or modulations of the voice.30 The Sirens address him as poluainos (xii.184),
which can be translated as “much praised,” but also “of many stories.”31
If both Athena and Odysseus are in themselves multitudes of possibilities, how does the
story of the Odyssey emerge through their collaboration? Around which grain of sand does the
pearl grow? As discussed earlier, the story begins with the moment when the situation of
27
The verb êperopeuô, which means to deceive, trick or beguile, can have sexual connotations. See xv.419, 425.
With the only exception of Book II, where, in the likeness of Telemachus, she recruits young volunteers to man
his ship (ii, 383-5).
29
Judging from the way Diomedes uses the phase, probably proverbial. Socrates’ references to this speech in Plato’s
Symposium 174d and, more clearly, Protagoras 348d seem to testify to this.
30
Pietro Pucci, The Song of the Sirens. Essays on Homer (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 1998), 25.
Pucci discusses Antistenes’ fifth-century commentary on the “polutropia” of the Odyssey.
31
Of the numerous discussions of Odysseus’ epithets, the following three seem to treat his multiplicity most
thoughtfully: William B. Stanford, “Homer’s Use of Personal Poly-Compounds,” Classical Philology, 1950,
45.108-10; John H. Finley, Jr., Homer’s Odyssey New York: Viking Press, 1978, 34-5; and, especially, Pietro Pucci,
The Song of the Sirens..., 23-9.
28
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indeterminacy in Ithaca and on Ogygia has reached a stage that requires a resolution. This
resolution, however, is not Athena’s whim; it is determined by who Odysseus is, by his fate to
return to Ithaca. Pucci suggests that Odysseus’ identity and fate are to a great extent shaped
precisely by his “manyness,” which, as a horizontal structure, means variety, but as a vertical
structure suggests repetition that, in turn, “leads to the notion of constant accumulation and
hoarding.”32 Through the repetitions, a certain pattern emerges from the text’s pulutropia. A. P.
David convincingly links this pattern with the Odyssey’s dance-rhythm composition, detectable
on all levels of its structure.33 We can imagine the fabula34 of the Odyssey as a straight line that
begins with the end of the Trojan War and ends in Ithaca shaken by the news of the massacre in
Odysseus’ court. The plot, on the other hand, should be represented as a circle, beginning and
ending in Ithaca – not a smooth circular line, but a dance circle, with rhythmical steps back.
Because of the constant turns, the plot’s line seems to be much longer than that of the fabula.
A closer look at the fabula, however, especially the part of it related by Odysseus to the
Phaeacians, shows that although it is chronologically straight, it exemplifies the pattern of turns
and twists characteristic of the epic’s plot. Thus, instead of going straight to Ithaca, Odysseus
and his fleet turn to plundering the city of the Cicones – a second Troy, in a sense. Then they try
to go straight to Ithaca, but a two-day storm changes their course and brings them to the Lotuseaters, where eating the lotus turns them forgetful. Odysseus manages to extract his people from
this state and they resume their voyage to Ithaca, but the next adventure – the blinding of
Poseidon’s son Polyphemus – brings about a major turn in Odysseus’ fate. Again, he tries to go
straight home, and – with Aeolus’ help – almost does, but the envy and curiosity of his
companions turn the ships back to Aeolus. After being rejected by Aeolus as men hated by the
gods, Odysseus and his companions make a radical turn back in three steps. First, they go to the
Laestrygonians, who very much resemble the Cyclops in their cannibalism. Then on to Circe’s
island, where they spent a year, eating and drinking. Finally, Odysseus descends to the
Underworld – a semi-death experience, reminiscent of the perils of the Trojan War. From this
point everything starts again, following the same pattern of movement forward with one-step’s
turn back, from Circe and the Sirens through Scylla to Thrinacia, and, after the slaughter of
Helios’ cattle, back, in two steps, through Charybdis to Calypso, whose world resembles those of
the Lotus-eaters, Circe, Nekyia, and the Sirens. The third step back, to Phaeacia, is postponed by
seven years. But most importantly, because of the chiastic structure of the story, the second set
of three steps back brings Odysseus closer to his starting point, just after the Trojan War, from
where he would have gone straight home – if the final destination were more important to him
than the voyage itself, as it was, for example, to Nestor. Thus, the plot of the Odyssey, as woven
by Athena and Odysseus, matches the peculiar character of its hero, the man of twists and turns.
The epic begins in medias res because a beginning from the beginning and a linear narrative
would have been unsuitable. The epic and its hero mirror each other to such an extent that it is
impossible to tell which shapes which.
The oyster’s grain of sand we are looking for, however, must be something more
compact than the polutropia of the epic and its hero. Odysseus’ name seems to be a better
32
Pietro Pucci, ibid., 23.
A. P. David, The Dance of the Muses (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006).
34
Under “fabula,” I understand a reconstruction of the events in the story in chronological order. See, for example,
Mieke Bal, Narratology. Introduction to the theory of Narrative, tr. by Christine van Boheemen (Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 1985), 11-47.
33
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candidate for the role of this grain of sand. Usually, it is withheld and revealed only as a
confirmation of what the inner or outer audience of the Odyssey has already heard and imagined.
It is missing from the proem and does not appear until line 21 of Book I. The Phaeacians learn
the name of their guest only on the third day of his stay in their city. Polyphemus learns it only
after he is blinded. When narrating his Cretan stories, Odysseus avoids introducing himself by
name, even a false one, which allows him to lie without really lying about his identity. We learn
the story of his name – at least as important as its etymology – only in the scar recognition scene
in Book XIX.
Odysseus’ name is discussed by scholars as the symbolic core of his character; it is, in
ancient fashion, an onoma eponumon, or appropriate for the designated object. George E.
Dimock, Jr., giving credit to a nameless ancient commentator for this observation, begins his
discussion of Odysseus’ name with the supposition that the epic shows how Odysseus lives up to
the meaning of his name.35 This meaning, its interpreters agree,36 comes from ôdusao second
singular aorist from odussomai, meaning “to be wroth,” “to rage”, which can have both an active
and a passive meaning. Thus, Odysseus is both wroth and rage-causing, or, if we are to find just
one English word that would preserve the ambiguity of ôdusao, the best choice – Dimock,
Austin, and Clay suggest – seems to be “trouble.” If Trouble is one’s name, no successful
encounter with strangers can begin with a personal introduction. The name has to be withheld
until Trouble is known a little better and his suffering has provoked empathy and understanding.
This strategy worked perfectly well with the Phaeacians who gave Trouble an escort to his native
island, forgetting about the prophecy that escorting strangers might one day cause serious trouble
for them. Thus, as Clay remarks,37 Odysseus has two aspects: he is both a victim and a
victimizer; he is a curse. But is it not strange that a cunning and loving grandfather would give
such a cursed name to his grandson? Why not something like Poluarêtos, or “longed-for in many
prayers,” a name that Eurycleia seems to suggest (xix.404)? Yet Autolycus demands:
gambros emos thugatêr te, tithesth' onom' hotti ken eipô:
polloisin gar egô ge odussamenos tod' hikanô,
andrasin êde gunaixin ana chthona pouluboteiran:
tôi d' Oduseus onom' estô epônumon. (xix.406-9)
My son-in-law and daughter, give the name I say:
for I come here a curse odyssamenos to many
men and women all over the much-nurturing earth;
therefore let his name appropriately be Odysseus.38
Does this mean that Autolycus himself is happy to be a curse and is making sure to pass this trait
to his grandson by naming him “appropriately”? Such a question may not be legitimate when
Autolycus, who has Hermes for a patron and friend (xix.397), is concerned. He is odyssamenos
35
George E. Dimock, “The Name of Odysseus” first published in 1956 in Hudson Review, Essays on the Odyssey.
Selected Modern Criticism, ed. by Charles H. Taylor, Jr. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1963), 54.
36
Elaborate discussions of the meaning of Odysseus’ name can be found, for instance, in Jenny Strauss Clay, The
Wrath of Athena…, 54-74; Norman Austin, “Name Magic in the Odyssey,” California Studies in Classical Antiquity
(5) 1972, 1-19; and Simon Goldhill, The Poets Voice: Essays on Poetics and Greek Literature Cambridge:
(Cambridge University Press, 1991), 24-8.
37
Jenny Strauss Clay, The Wrath of Athena…, 62, 64.
38
In Jenny Strauss Clay’s translation. Ibid., 59.
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precisely because he is like Hermes, the trickster god, famous for his stealthiness and false
oaths.39 However, a strong tie uniting grandfather and grandson can be perceived in the meaning
of Autolycus’ name and Odysseus’ character. Autolycus means something like “Lone Wolf,”40
or “Loner.” Being trouble and a curse certainly alienates one from society. As G. S. Kirk points
out in his comparison of the protagonists of the Iliad and the Odyssey, Achilles “represents some
of the commonest aspirations and failings of human nature, though on a superhuman scale.
Odysseus is a specialized being, a curious mixture of heroic and intellectual qualities that can
never have been frequent in any society.”41 Kirk goes on to conclude that the ambiguity and
contradictions of Odysseus’ character make him less interesting, “largely because of the role the
main poet has seen fit to assign to Athene, and to the altered conception, different from that in
the Iliad, of the way in which the gods rule the life of the mortals.”42 His unenthusiastic
judgment notwithstanding, Kirk seems to have captured a significant peculiarity of Odysseus’
character: he certainly does not represent “the commonest aspirations and failures of human
nature” – he is like no other mortal man in the Homeric epics. In cunning, he is like Athena and
also like Hermes, the patron god of his grandfather. He is helped by both gods in a way that,
Kirk believes, makes him less of “a hero developing with his circumstances.”43 It is certainly true
that Odysseus, despite all his suffering, does not seem to change much. In this respect, he is like
one of the immortals. However, like the poet of the Odyssey, he is very much concerned with
time – always making sure to create the illusion of real time by mentioning exactly how many
days or years each event took.44
What kind of hero then is this much-suffering and enduring but unchanging Odysseus? If
he is not a tragic hero, then perhaps he is a comic hero, as some interpreters reason. Or, as
Longinus confidently explains, Odysseus is the hero produced by Homer’s declining poetic
genius and calmed passions of an old man, and the Odyssey is “a comedy of manners.”45 I would
like to propose a different possibility that becomes apparent if the Odyssey is approached as a
work of metafiction.
The polutropia of Odysseus’ character, its ambivalences, inconsistencies, and cautious
nobodiness, so pertinent to storytelling, the suffering that he turns into stories worthy of a bard,
his ability to create the illusion of different identities as the circumstances require it, the
impossibility of accounting for the truthfulness of his fantastic adventures, the dance-like rhythm
of his prolonged voyage and its all too well ordered chiastic structure, and, last, but not least, the
difficulties encountered by anyone who tries to apply a strict moral judgment to the character of
Odysseus – all that, considered together, looks very much like an uncanny anticipation of the
39
Norman Brown, Hermes the Thief: The Evolution of a Myth (New York: Vintage Books, 1969), 8-9.
Jenny Strauss Clay, The Wrath of Athena…, 59.
41
“G. S. Kirk on the Odyssey as a Less Tragic Poem than the Iliad,” Homer’s Odyssey. A Contemporary Literary
Views Book, ed. by Harold Bloom (Broomall, Pa.: Chelsea House Publishers, 1996), 62.
42
Ibid.
43
Ibid., 63.
44
A careful analysis of the time-table of the plot of the Odyssey, however, clearly shows that the poet is interested
only in creating the illusion of real time. Irene de Jong, in A Narratological Commentary…, 588, proposes a timetable according to which the plot of the Odyssey, from the divine assembly to Odysseus’ reunion with Laertes,
develops within 41 days. Hermes is sent to Calypso on the seventh day, and the suitors are killed on the fortieth day.
However, if Telemachus’ journey is to really fit in this scheme, it should have lasted 34 days, while from
Telemachus’ perspective it lasts about 10 days. Time in the fantastic realm from which Odysseus returns seems to
be more than twice as dense.
45
Longinus, “On the Sublime,” tr. by W. R. Roberts, Critical Theory since Plato, ed. by Hazard Adams (New York:
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1971), 83.
40
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modern writer’s creative potential. It is clear that, despite the fact that he is able to charm the
Phaeacians or Eumaeus as if he were a minstrel taught by the god (xvii.518), no one in the
Odyssey mistakes him for a minstrel, nor does he disguise himself as a minstrel, though this
seems to be a possibility with interesting potential. For one thing, Odysseus is not praying to the
Muse for inspiration and he is not using the lyre. Second, like a modern autobiographical writer,
he presents his story as a personal experience and tells it in a first-person narrative. Third,
Odysseus’ stories have radically different purpose from a minstrel’s stiries. While a minstrel,
moved by the Muse, sings for the song’s sake and to entertain his audience, Odysseus’ stories –
all tales of woe – are a “stranger’s stratagem.” As Glenn W. Most argues,46 the mechanism and
economy of the stranger’s stratagem are focused on winning the audience’s sympathy and on
obtaining help. The speaker, Most notices, exercises power over his listeners. If he praises
himself, he will aggravate the listeners. Cunning Odysseus, of course, never does; he leaves it to
Demodocus to sing the story of the wooden horse. Instead, he skillfully adapts his story
to the listener’s conscious and unconscious exigencies [and tries] to give him what
he wanted without letting him realize he knew that he was doing so… As Aristotle
pointed out, a believable impossibility was likelier to be successful than
unbelievable possibility Poetics (25.1461b 11-12)… This means that the listener’s
attitude to the autobiographer’s performance was essentially aesthetic.47
Most’s observation clearly distinguishes between the non-aesthetic purpose of the stranger’s
story and its aesthetic reception. But is Odysseus’ situation that different from that of a modern
writer who is always in the position of a stranger aspiring to win his audience? Do tales of woe
not prevail in fiction of quality? A happy ending might work in a story that has already won the
trust of the reader, but success stories belong to the genre of guidebooks, which does not have
aesthetic ambitions. Amazingly, it would seem then that the image of the modern writer was
anticipated in the Odyssey before its emergence in life.
The character of Odysseus, however, is only one part of this image. It is complemented
by the character of Athena, whose plan of fulfilling Odysseus’ fate is in fact the plot of the
Odyssey. Kirk seems right in his intuition that Odysseus’ insufficiency as a hero is due to
Athena’s role in the Odyssey. If Athena and Odysseus are projections of the poet’s creative
powers, their main concern is not Odysseus’ return to Ithaca, but the story of this return. To be
sure, this goal is carefully camouflaged. Athena tells her father Zeus, in front of the divine
assembly, that her heart is torn for Odysseus (i.48) and complains that the gods have forgotten
him (v.11). But, as Odysseus plainly puts it, after the sacking of Troy, Athena herself has
disappeared from his life to reappear, disguised, only in the tenth year, on the Phaeacian shore
and to lead him to Alcinous’ palace (xiii, 316-24). As noted earlier, Athena in fact seems to
appear only after a critical amount of material for a story has accumulated. Similarly, Odysseus
is first shown on Calypso’s island, mournfully longing for Ithaca (v.153). He always says to his
hosts that he wants to go home but, in fact, he is largely responsible for the twists and turns that
prolong his voyage and preclude a safe and speedy return from the war.
46
Glenn W. Most, “The Stranger’s Stratagem: Self-Disclosure and Self-Sufficiency in Greek Culture,” Journal of
Hellenic Studies, (109) 1989, 114-33, and “The Structure and Function of Odysseus’ Apologoi,” Transactions of the
American Philological Association (119) 1989, 15-30.
47
Glenn W. Most, “The Stranger’s Stratagem…,” 131.
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There is enough evidence of Odysseus’ awareness of the making of the story of the
Odyssey, in which he is much more than a hero. For example, at the end of his nearly twentytwo-hundred-line story told at the Phaeacian court, Odysseus refers to Calypso, but refrains from
telling more about that last adventure. “It was only yesterday I told it to you and your noble wife.
It seems to me detestable to repeat a story that was already told so clearly”:
êdê gar toi chthizos emutheomên eni oikôi
soi te kai iphthimêi alochôi: echthron de moi estin
autis arizêlôs eirêmena muthologeuein (xii.451-3).
We remember, however, that Odysseus only mentions Calypso when Arete, puzzled by the fact
that the stranger wears some of the finest garments she has made for her daughter’s dowry,
inquires who he is (vii.240-66). Odysseus makes it known that Calypso is the goddess who gave
him even better immortal clothes (vii.260) and whose marriage proposal he refused. But
Odysseus did not tell a story about Calypso to the Phaecians; it was the poet of the Odyssey who
told that story to the audience and it is the poet who does not want to repeat it. By the same
token, it is the poet who makes sure to tell Odysseus’ adventures early in the plot, to an audience
of strangers, in order to avoid telling them in detail at home to Penelope and his family – a
friendly environment in which “the stranger’s stratagem” would be pointless and the story would
never be that enthralling and artful.
Another example of the peculiar role of Odysseus as both a hero and a projection of the
author’s creative intentions is his request to Penelope to order some older servant to wash his
feet. Of course, he knows that most probably this would be Eurycleia and that she would
recognize him by the scar. But if he wants to be recognized, why does he seem to be surprised,
why does he seize his nurse’s throat by his hand and threatens to slay her along with the other
serving women, if she does not keep the secret (xix.479-90)? This apparent contradiction could
be explained again by the special function of Odysseus as a director of the plot, in which he is at
the same time an actor. It is the poet of the Odyssey who needs the recognition scene in order to
finally reveal the core of Odysseus’ identity – the story and the meaning of his name. The plot’s
hero, however, in order to fulfill his plan, needs to avoid recognition. Hence, Odysseus the actor
contradicts Odysseus the director.
Thus, we detect a complex triangular relationship between the poet of the Odyssey,
Athena, as a mastermind and director of the story’s plot, and Odysseus, in his twofold function
of assistant director and actor. The Muse remains an external source of inspiration and only gives
the initial impact to the story. The collaboration between Athena and Odysseus, however, seems
to emulate the relationship between the Muse and the Poet. In each case, the divinity is
responsible for the general principle, or the logos of the story or of a particular event in it, while
the human assistant turns it into flesh. To be sure, this arrangement is not schematic. In the
Odyssey, Athena collaborates not only with Odysseus, but also with Telemachus and, in a
peculiar way, with Penelope. With Telemachus the goddess is more direct, though the young
man never encounters her in the maiden form that she reveals to his father on the shore of Ithaca.
At Eumaeus’ farm, Telemachus observes how the beggar changes into a prince and then again
into a beggar – a wonder in which he recognizes Athena’s style. Just recently, in his capacity as
Odysseus’ son, he has been made privy to this style. He has inherited, so to say, Athena’s
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sponsorship.48 Thus, Athena’s name, uttered by the stranger autar toi tode ergon Athênaiês
ageleiês (xvii.207), functions as a token of identification. Telemachus does not require further
proof. Odysseus’ identity is attested by Athena’s patronage, which Telemachus now recognizes
from his own experience. Somewhat paradoxically, this is the fastest of all recognitions in the
Odyssey. The true paradox, however, appears to be Penelope’s slow recognition.
3. Athena and Penelope
The wife’s reluctant recognition of her long-absent husband is in the core of an ancient, widely
spread tale motif. As Chris Emlyn-Jones notices, “[t]he comparative material reveals that the
element of postponement of recognition by means of false stories, tests, disbelief and signs, is by
no means confined to the Homeric poems.”49 Thus, to the ancient audience, Penelope’s slow
recognition of Odysseus must not have come across as strange. The bizarre element, however,
seems to be in the ambivalence of that slowness. How aware is Penelope of the true identity of
the stranger in her halls? There have been numerous endeavors to explain this ambivalence in
psychological terms. The idea of Penelope’s unconscious recognition of Odysseus seems to
prevail. Cedric H. Whitman believes that “it has been most persuasively argued” that the
conversation between Penelope and disguised Odysseus in the firelight, “a cryptic
acknowledgement by Penelope of the stranger’s identity.”50 Joseph Russo offers the following
summary of the psychological interpretations: “Penelope has, during her interview with the
stranger, become progressively aware, on an intuitive and unconscious level, not that this man is
her husband, but that he has an uncanny familiarity about him, that he stirs up the same feeling
that her husband does, and is in some sense his like or his near-equivalent.”51 This kind of halfawareness would be plausible only if Penelope’s perception of the world were intuitive, as Anne
Amory depicts it, rather than rational:
[While Odysseus] looks at most things unwaveringly … and what he sees is
immediately recognized by him as what it is, Penelope … looks at things only
intermittently and thinks intuitively rather than rationally. She is always holding a
veil in front of her face, or looking away from things, just as she does not notice
Eurycleia’s recognition of Odysseus. Odysseus knows what he knows, so he
always doubts others, but never himself; once he has tested something, he is sure
of it. But Penelope’s knowledge is often unconscious; she doubts everything,
48
And with it – some mêtis, as Norman Austin discusses in “Telemachos Polumechanos,” California Studies in
Classical Antiquity (2) 1969, 45-63. Still, he seems too quick to recognize his father about whom he has no
memories, he leaves the door of the store-room with the weapons open (xxii.156), and he has no understanding for
his mother’s difficulty with accepting the fact that the stranger is Odysseus. Until the end of the epic, Odysseus’ and
Penelope’s mêtis is not matched by their son’s cunning.
49
Chris Emlyn-Jones, “The Reunion of Penelope and Odysseus,” Greece & Rome (31) 1984, 31, 7. Emlyn-Jones,
referring to J. T. Kakridis, Homer Revisited (Lund, 1971), 151-3, discusses a contemporary Greek ballad that
compresses all the means of postponement found in the Odyssey.
50
Cedric H. Whitman, Homer and the Heroic Tradition, 303. Whitman refers to P. W. Harsh, “Penelope and
Odysseus in Odyssey XIX,” American Journal of Philology (71) 1950, 1-21, and Anne Amory, Dreams and Omens
in Homer’s Odyssey, Ph.D. dissertation Harvard University, 1957.
51
Joseph Russo, “Books XVII-XX,” Commentary on Homer’s Odyssey, vol. III, 9-10.
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including, or perhaps especially, what she herself has observed, in spite of the fact
that her intuitive penetration is both profound and accurate.52
The interview with the stranger in Book XIX, however, reveals a different, perhaps
intuitive, but also prudent and intelligent periphrôn Penelope, as Patricia Marquardt showed in
“Penelope Polutropos.”53 Nancy Felson-Rubin ventures a comprehensive portrait of the
periphrôn or “circumspect,” as she prefers to translate the epithet Penelope as “the creator of
several plots that we can label from her own female-centered perspective: Courtship and
Marriage, Dalliance, Disdain and Bride of Death, and Patience. She dreaded Infidelity and
wanted to avoid it at all cost.”54 Marylin A. Katz argues that Penelope’s behavior is ambivalent,
just like her fame. The narrower understanding of Penelope’s kleos as “faithfulness,” Katz points
out, is destabilized, although never displaced, by its inclusive understanding.55 Penelope is much
more than a faithful wife to Odysseus; her marriage is a defining dimension of her character, but
not the only dimension. This complicates and slows down the reunion.
The interpreters of Penelope’s character and her slow recognition of Odysseus tend to
ignore Athena’s involvement. A vision of the goddess as the director of the Odyssey’s plot opens
an entirely different interpretive possibility that is rooted not so much in the character’s
psychology but in the psychology of creativity. Could Penelope’s puzzling slowness or her
cryptic, intuitive recognition of Odysseus be Athena’s doing? There are hints in the Odyssey that
this may be so. These hints become more easily discernible if we are aware of the triangle that
involves Penelope, Athena, and Odysseus.
If the three main arts that Athena possesses and is able to grant to mortals are the art of
cunning, the strategic art of war, and the art of all handiwork, Odysseus and Penelope, as a
couple, have got everything the goddess has to offer. In a sense, the arts of war and all
handiwork could be considered the gender-marked forms of fulfillment of the same quality of
mind – mêtis. This makes Odysseus and Penelope the perfect couple for Athena to support. The
triangle has the potential to be isosceles.56 Yet it is not. Athena – or the poet of the Odyssey –
does not seem to like this kind of symmetry. Instead, the goddess’ involvement in Ithaca is
divided, again unequally, between Telemachus and Penelope. Telemachus is the first one to be
initiated in the plan that Athena and Odysseus designed to slaughter the suitors. Penelope learns
about it post factum. Why? Is there any suspicion that she has been unfaithful? Anticleia in the
Underworld, as well as Athena and Eurycleia, all confirm Penelope’s chastity. The audience is
not given any clues that this may be otherwise. Just the opposite: it is clear that Penelope never
leaves the house and she is shown continuously weeping. Not only her body, but also her mind is
52
Anne Amory, “The Reunion of Odysseus and Penelope,” Essays on the Odyssey, ed. by Charles H. Taylor, Jr.,
104.
53
Patricia Marquardt, “Penelope Polutropos,” American Journal of Philology (106) 1985, 32-49.
54
Nancy Felton-Rubin, “Penelope’s Perspective: Character from Plot,” Reading the Odyssey, ed. by Seth L. Schein,
183.
55
Marylin A. Katz, Penelope’s Renown: Meaning and Indeterminacy in the Odyssey (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton
University Press, 1991), 6.
56
Lillian E. Doherty, in her article “Athena and Penelope as Foils for Odysseus in the Odyssey,” Quaderni urbinati
di cultura classica (39) 1991, discusses a different triangle, with Odysseus on top, while the goddess and the wife
use their cunning in his service – each in accordance with her status. This underscores Odysseus’ central position in
the epic. The contrasts between Athena and Penelope, Doherty notices, “serve to delimit the figure of Odysseus,”
34-41.
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chaste.57 Is there any suspicion that Penelope’s understanding heart may take pity on the suitors
and spare their lives? One never knows, but she certainly seems to think that the suitors are all
hateful echthroi (xvii.499) and wishes for their destruction. Just before interviewing the stranger
who so much resembles her long-absent husband, she says:
ei d' Oduseus elthoi kai hikoit' es patrida gaian,
aipsa ke sun hôi paidi bias apotisetai andrôn (xvii.539-40).
if only Odysseus came back home to native soil now,
he and his son would avenge the outrage of these men.58
At this point Telemachus sneezes loudly. Penelope takes it as a portent that her wish will be
fulfilled:
tôi ke kai ouk atelês thanatos mnêstêrsi genoito
pasi mal', oude ke tis thanaton kai kêras aluxei (xvii.546-7).59
So let death come down with grim finality on these suitors—
one and all—not a single man escape his sudden doom!60
Earlier, Penelope expresses a similar wish about Antinous’ death (xvii.494). On the other hand,
the very presence of the suitors at Odysseus’ palace is problematic and is never cogently
explained. In addition, the fact that some of Penelope’s maids couple with the suitors can be
interpreted as reflecting her own unconscious desire to sleep with them – one of the possible
reasons for the cruel punishment of the guilty maids. This possibility is supported by Penelope’s
symbolic dream vision of the suitors as her pet geese killed by the eagle – Odysseus (xix.53558).
Penelope’s tolerance for the hundred and eight suitors from Dulichium, Same, Zacynthus,
and Ithaca could be explained as evidence of her mêtis. It is certainly easier to keep at a distance
a larger group of suitors. As Patricia Marquardt points out, “Penelope’s encouragement of widescale courtship can be viewed not as the action of a vain or insecure woman but as the action of a
very cunning woman, who is using the suitors to acquiesce to the social pressure to remarry, all
the while being ‘forced’ by their very numbers to stay where she intends to stay, and where the
suitors want her to be when she chooses one of them: Odysseus’ house.”61 As for Penelope’s
subconscious desires, they were probably all repressed by her constant longing for Odysseus,
who was not only her husband but also her perfect match in mêtis – her missing half.
57
As Froma I. Zetlin points out in “Figuring Fidelity in Homers Odyssey,” The Distaff Side: Representing the
Female in Homer’s Odyssey New York: Oxford University Press, 1995, 151, “Fidelity is less an affair of the heart
than the mind noos, and infidelity is as much equated with changing that noos or failing to remember as it is to
engage in conscious and active deception. Hence, Penelope’s epithet, echephrôn keeping good sense not only attests
to her intelligence and perspicacity but also includes a capacity to remain steadfast in that noos, keeping her husband
always in mind. Sôphrôn and the noun, sôphrosynê whose literal meaning is “to keep the mind safe,” is unknown in
Homeric diction but later becomes the standard word for chastity.”
58
Homer, The Odyssey, tr. by Robert Fagles, 372.
59
Line 547 is sometimes omitted. See Homer, The Odyssey, tr. by A. T. Murray (Loeb Library, v. II), 199.
60
Homer, The Odyssey, tr. by Robert Fagles, 372.
61
Patricia Marquardt, “Penelope Polutropos,” 36.
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With all this in mind, it seems difficult to think of any critical reason for not initiating
Penelope into the plan for slaying the suitors. Moreover, she is in fact involved in this plan
without being aware of it – by showing herself to the suitors and kindling their erotic desire on
the eve of the massacre, and by setting up the archery contest. If Penelope did not share in
Athena’s and Odysseus’ mêtis, we could explain this exclusion with considerations about her
ability to conceal the secret. A guileless woman, in the presence of her husband, would not be
able to pretend that she seriously considers remarrying. But by no means is this a task beyond the
artful Penelope. It may also seem that Odysseus’ cautiousness and, perhaps, well-concealed
jealousy make him postpone revealing himself to his wife. Only recently has he heard –
firsthand, in the Underworld – the story of Agamemnon’s bloody nostos and certainly does not
want to repeat it. It seems, however, that Penelope’s exclusion from the plot is presented by the
poet largely as Athena’s doing.62 At least three events in the story may lead us to such a
conclusion:
First, after she has assumed the form of a woman, “beautiful, tall, and skilled in splendid
handiwork” (xiii.288-9), and has declared that she and Odysseus are the most cunning pair in the
immortal and mortal worlds, the goddess begins weaving a plan to be fulfilled by the two of
them. She instructs Odysseus to reveal himself to no man or woman mêde tôi ekphasthai mêt'
andrôn mête gunaikôn (xiii.303). She does not mention Telemachus yet. It is not clear why
Odysseus is not supposed to disclose himself to Penelope, whose faithfulness Athena does not
question. But let us examine this issue closely. When Odysseus diplomatically tells Athena that
after the sack of Troy he missed her protection and that he knew it was she who helped him at
Phaeacia, the goddess exclaims:
aiei toi toiouton eni stêthessi noêma:
tôi se kai ou dunamai prolipein dustênon eonta,
hounek' epêtês essi kai anchinoos kai echephrôn.
aspasiôs gar k' allos anêr alalêmenos elthôn
hiet' eni megarois ideein paidas t' alochon te:
soi d' ou pô philon esti daêmenai oude puthesthai,
prin g' eti sês alochou peirêseai, hê te toi autôs
hêstai eni megaroisin, oïzurai de hoi aiei
phthinousin nuktes te kai êmata dakru cheousêi. (xiii.330-8).63
Always the same, your wary turn of mind […]
That’s why I can’t forsake you in your troubles—
you are so winning, so worldly-wise, so self-possessed!
Anyone else, come back from wandering long and hard,
would have hurried home at once, delighted to see
his children and his wife. Oh, but not you,
62
Chris Emlyn-Jones, in “The Reunion of Penelope and Odysseus,” 11, points out that “Penelope’s motivation has
been obscured by Athene’s aims.” Athena’s employment, however, is explained with the poet’s aim to bring “into
the foreground the ambiguity of [Penelope’s] situation and … to explore the personal and social pressures upon her
sympathetically and at some depth,” 14. Sheila Murnaghan, in “The Plan of Athena,” The Distaff Side: Representing
the Female in Homer’s Odyssey (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995) 71, describes “Athena’s management
of Penelope [as] both unusually manipulative and unusually at odds with the inclinations of the human character
involved” and in contrast with “the extraordinary partnership she establishes with Odysseus in Book 13.”
63
Lines 333-8 were rejected by Aristarchus. See The Odyssey, tr. by A. T. Murray. v. II, 26.
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it’s not your pleasure to probe for news of them—
you must put your wife to the proof yourself!
But she, she waits in your halls, as always,
her life an endless hardship…64
By telling Odysseus what kind of man he is, Athena is actually telling him what kind of man she
expects him to be. After hiding Odysseus’ treasures, goddess and man continue discussing their
plan – under Athena’s sacred olive tree. We should not miss the peculiar undercurrent of this
conversation, carefully navigated by the cunning goddess:
tô de kathezomenô hierês para puthmen' elaiês
phrazesthên mnêstêrsin huperphialoisin olethron.
toisi de muthôn êrche thea glaukôpis Athênê:
“diogenes Laertiadê, polumêchan' Odusseu,
phrazeu hopôs mnêstêrsin anaidesi cheiras ephêseis,
hoi dê toi trietes megaron kata koiraneousi,
mnômenoi antitheên alochon kai hedna didontes:
hê de son aiei noston oduromenê kata thumon
pantas men rh' elpei kai hupischetai andri hekastôi,
angelias proïeisa, noos de hoi alla menoinai.
tên d' apameibomenos prosephê polumêtis Odusseus:
“ô popoi, ê mala dê Agamemnonos Atreïdao
phthisesthai kakon oiton eni megaroisin emellon,
ei mê moi su hekasta, thea, kata moiran eeipes.
all' age mêtin huphênon, hopôs apotisomai autous. (xiii.372-86).
Then down they sat by the sacred olive’s trunk
to plot the death of the high and mighty suitors.
The bright-eyed goddess Athena led the way:
“Royal son of Laertes, Odysseus, old campaigner,
think how to lay your hands on all those brazen suitors,
lording it over your house now, three whole years,
courting your noble wife, offering gifts to win her.
But she, forever broken-hearted for your return,
builds up each man’s hopes—
dangling promises, dropping hints to each—
but all the while with something else in mind.”
“God help me!” the man of intrigue broke out:
“Clearly I might have died the same ignoble death
as Agamemnon, bled white in my own house too,
if you had never revealed this to me now,
goddess, point by point.
Come, weave us a scheme so I can pay them back!65
64
65
Homer, The Odyssey, tr. by Robert Fagles, 297.
Ibid., 298-9.
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In a manner curiously resembling that of Shakespeare’s Iago, Athena kindles doubt in
Odysseus’ heart precisely by asserting – twice – Penelope’s faithfulness. There is no clue in the
preceding lines that Odysseus intended to avoid revealing himself to Penelope. Athena manages
to convince him that unlike anyone else, he – the polumêtis one – would not reveal himself. She
also shrewdly brings to Odysseus’ attention the ambivalence of the suitors’ presence in his court
– for an unclear reason, it seems that Penelope herself keeps them there.
Another event worth attention with regard to Athena’s peculiar attitude towards Penelope
is found in Book XVIII. The setting is particularly meaningful: Telemachus and Odysseus are
sitting with the suitors; Odysseus has won an easy victory against the other beggar, Irus, and has
just warned Amphinomus to leave in order to avoid the bloody revenge of Odysseus who is on
his way home (xviii.148-9). At this point, Athena makes Penelope think and behave
uncharacteristically:
têi d' ar' epi phresi thêke thea glaukôpis Athênê,
kourêi Ikarioio, periphroni Pênelopeiêi,
mnêstêressi phanênai, hopôs petaseie malista
thumon mnêstêrôn ide timêessa genoito
mallon pros posios te kai huieos ê paros êen (xviii.158-162).
But now the goddess Athena with her glinting eyes
inspired Penelope, Icarius’ daughter, wary, poised,
to display herself to her suitors, fan their hearts,
inflame them more, and make her even more esteemed
by her husband and her son than she had been before.66
Embarrassed by her own wish, Penelope laughs and tells her maid, Eurynome, about it achreion
d' egelassen epos t' ephat' ek t' onomazen (xviii.163). However, she feels the need to conceal this
sudden and inexplicable urge behind the façade of apprehension about Telemachus’ safety: she
will go to the suitors in order to tell her son not to associate with those evil men. These lines
have provoked much discussion and there have been attempts to explain them away as a remnant
from another version of the story in which Penelope has already recognized Odysseus and the
two of them act in concert against the suitors.67 This might well be so, but the poet of the
Odyssey seems to have been entirely aware of his use of what is supposed to be the older
version. The detailed description of Athena’s beautifying Penelope in what we would today call
a hypnotic sleep, which immediately follows the exchange between Penelope and Eurynome,
brings to our attention the fact that the character of Penelope is now in control of Athena, the
main director of the plot. To be sure, the goddess is pursuing some practical goals: the erôs
Penelope’s appearance provokes in the suitors will make them compete even more ardently by
bringing precious gifts to her. Eros the limb-melter will weaken their attention and physical
strength. Such goals, however, could be achieved by cunning Penelope with her full knowledge
of Athena’s purpose and without or with the realization that Odysseus is among the suitors. Yet
Athena does not speak to Penelope, as she does, for example, through the phantom of her sister,
66
Ibid., 381.
Joseph Russo, in his commentary on Books XVII-XX, offers a summary of this discussion. Commentary on
Homer’s Odyssey, vol. III, 58-9.
67
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Ismene, in Book IV 795-837. Athena uses her powers to make Penelope do whatever is
necessary for the plot development without making her aware of it.
A third, similar and much discussed episode is Odysseus’ recognition by Eurycleia. As
she washes Odysseus’ legs, the old nurse immediately spots the scar. She is surprised that she
did not recognize Odysseus immediately and instinctively turns to Penelope:
ê kai Pênelopeian esedraken ophthalmoisi,
pephradeein ethelousa philon posin endon eonta.
hê d' out' athrêsai dunat' antiê oute noêsai:
têi gar Athênaiê noon etrapen. (xix.476-9)
She glanced at Penelope, keen to signal her
that here was her own dear husband, here and now,
but she could not catch the glance, she took no heed,
Athena turned her attention elsewhere.68
After missing the whole scar recognition scene, Penelope tells the stranger about her dream of
the white geese killed by the eagle and about the archery contest she intends to set up. Both meet
with Odysseus’ enthusiasm. Has Athena inspired the idea of the contest? The goddess must have
diverted Penelope’s attention by some truly engaging thoughts. Otherwise, she would have
noticed the stunning tableau: her guest almost smothering the old maid. Book XXI announces
straightforwardly that Athena put the idea of the contest into the heart of prudent Penelope
(xxi.1-4). The two main tricks that Penelope is famous for – the weaving-unweaving and the
archery contest – seem to correspond to Athena’s main attributes as a cunning weaver and
warrior.
Why does Athena prefer to use Penelope in her divine plot without ever involving her
directly, as she does Odysseus and Telemachus? We already mentioned the unique ways in
which Odysseus and Penelope are like Athena. If Odysseus’ storytelling is – metaphorically – a
form of weaving, Odysseus indeed is like Athena in all her main attributes. Not so Penelope,
however. She possesses female characteristics and fulfills female roles that are foreign to
Athena. The poet of the Odyssey likens Penelope’s beauty to Aphrodite’s and Artemis’ Artemidi
ikelê êe chruseêi Aphroditêi (xvii.37; xix.54). Penelope’s prayer for quick death on the night
after she has interviewed and tested the stranger invokes the three goddesses, Artemis,
Aphrodite, and Athena, and – implicitly – Hera, the goddess of marriage. This extended prayer is
a lyrical expression of the bittersweet feeling of Odysseus’ absence-presence caused by the
stranger’s uncanny likeness to him. Penelope’s female sensitivity, so movingly expressed in her
elaborate plea for death as a way to save forever this odd mix of hope and hopelessness, would
seem bizarre to Athena. Penelope is like her, to be sure, but she is also like those other female
goddesses. Like Hera, she is a wife and a queen. At the same time she has lived in chastity for
twenty years, so, symbolically, she is a virgin like Artemis and can be given in marriage by her
father. Like Aphrodite, she provokes ardent sexual desire, but, like Athena, she is not at all
interested in satisfying it. Certain sides of Penelope’s unique feminine polutropia are beyond the
realm of Athena’s interest. Is that why Athena does not collaborate with Penelope, but engages
her as a tool in the completion of the plot? Perhaps to some extent. The main reason, however,
seems to be structural.
68
The Odyssey, tr. by Robert Fagles, 405.
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The structure of the kind of story that the poet of the Odyssey has decided to preserve – a
story very much aware of its own coming into existence and especially worthy of preserving
because woven by the goddess of all handicrafts – does not allow for a full involvement of
Penelope. Such an involvement would have diminished Athena’s active role in plotting in
collaboration with Odysseus. The Odyssey would have been a story about Odysseus and
Penelope and the divine impact in it would have been comparable with that in the Iliad.69 As
some possible vestiges from or references to other versions of the Odyssey seem to imply,
Odysseus and Penelope could carry on the whole Ithacan part of the plot on their own; Athena’s
divine help would have been needed mostly in the slaughtering of the suitors. The account that
one of the slaughtered suitors gives to Agamemnon in the Underworld – which differs from what
the audience has already heard – can be seen as a vestige of such a version. According to this
account, Penelope plotted the suitors’ death from the very beginning, when she started weaving
and unweaving the shroud for Laertes; Telemachus returned to Ithaca with his father or
somehow led the way before Odysseus (it is not clear whether they came to Ithaca on the same
ship); the archery contest was Odysseus’ idea which he realized with Penelope’s complicity
(xxiv.121-90). This report sounds like a different story and, indeed, it could be coming from a
different version of Odysseus’ nostos story. However, incorporated into our Odyssey, it brings in
the idea of the suitors’ perspective on the events as different from that of the epic’s audience. To
make the account trustworthy, the poet has put it in the mouth of Amphimedon – the suitor
whom Odysseus tried to spare by warning him about the imminent bloodshed.
We could imagine a version of the epic, in which Telemachus, too, is more involved in
Odysseus’ nostos. In the Odyssey, he brings to Ithaca a stranger, Theoclymenos – an exile whose
story is suspiciously similar to Odysseus’ first Cretan story told to Athena on the shore of Ithaca.
Both stories are about killing as a cause of exile (xiii.226-86; xv.272-8) – perhaps a premonition
of Odysseus’ situation after killing the suitors. In addition, it turns out that Theoclymenos has a
soothsayer’s gift and – almost repeating the beggar’s words – foresees that Odysseus is already
in Ithaca and plotting his revenge against the suitors (xvii.155-9). Finally, just before the archery
contest, Theoclymenos has a ghastly vision of death and destruction that he reports to the suitors,
only to be pronounced mad by them. We could imagine a version of Odysseus’ nostos story in
which his unsuspecting son brings him to Ithaca, as Theoclymenos, proclaiming his own return.
Again, Athena’s help would have been needed only for the super-human task of killing over a
hundred suitors.
The Odyssey that has reached us seems to have been aware of the possibilities of
Odysseus’ closer collaboration with Penelope and Telemachus, and to have rejected such
possibilities. The Muse, too, could be called on more often, as in the Iliad, but she is not. Thus,
an ample space is opened for Athena. Along with her role as an embodiment of cunning
intelligence, in the Odyssey Athena is a partner of Odysseus. Charles H. Taylor observes how
different goddess Athena is from the other female characters whom Odysseus encounters:
Odysseus’ quest for identity is in fact profoundly involved with the feminine. In
seeking the wholeness of his being, he passes through intimate experience with
various embodiments of archetypal woman, each reflecting some aspect of what
he as masculine hero lacks. The majority of these women pose the temptation of a
return to the matriarchal order, where a man can be killed or be comfortable, but
is dead as a hero in either case. Athene alone is not earth-bound and instinctual,
69
As G. S. Kirk and Jenny Straus Clay note, however, in the Odyssey, the divine participates in a different manner.
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for she is associated instead with those intellectual and spiritual values which
distinguish civilized human beings… For all her beauty, Athene’s Olympian
dignity offers no biological warmth and her immortality disqualifies her as a
heroic consort. Only Penelope shares Odysseus’ intellectual alertness and is yet so
alluring that she can represent the feminine part of his heroic individuality.70
But perhaps it will be enough to acknowledge that Odysseus has two literary partners: Athena, in
storymaking, and Penelope, in the life that provides material for stories. Athena’s declaration
that Odysseus is her match among the mortals is uncharacteristic because, unlike Aphrodite or
Artemis, she is always alone,71 independent and powerful; she does not have attendants. True, at
times, she asks Zeus for advice, but it is more to ensure his support for her own plans than to
help her to make up her mind. Like her father, she has a protean nature; like Hermes, she is a
mediator between the heavens and earth. This allows her to function with ease in the liminal
realm between the eternal and the temporal. On the whole, Athena possesses the kind of nature
and powers that a maker of stories would dream of possessing. Athena is the ideal authorial
persona, able to weave together, resourcefully, selected bits of material available to the poet of
the Odyssey. A cunning maker himself, the poet has come up with the ingenious idea to present
the story he has chosen to preserve as Athena’s doing from the beginning to the end. The goals
of his authorial persona are actualized as Athena’s goals. Odysseus’ mythical experience, on the
other hand, provides the material for Athena’s creation. As a storyteller, Odysseus reflects the
poet’s actual person. In other words, the poet of the Odyssey is not a Demodocus or a Phemius –
these bards belong to the past. We should imagine him – or her – more like a precursor of the
modern writer, very much aware of his own creative process and not concealing this awareness.
This unconcealed awareness, I believe, is the poet’s reason for rejecting the possible full
collaboration between Penelope and Odysseus in favor of one between Athena and Odysseus.
The poet had to choose between two main possibilities of cunning partnership: a symmetrical
couple of two extraordinary mortal individuals or an asymmetrical couple of a god and a mortal.
The symmetrical relationship between Odysseus and Penelope, if they were the plot-moving
couple, would not have tied in with the asymmetrical model established by the traditional idea of
creative collaboration between the Muse and the bard. On the other hand, sacrificing the
symmetry of the mortal polutropos couple for example, by conferring the initiative and the lead
of the plot on either Odysseus or Penelope would have hurt the concord of this relationship – a
harmony that makes Odysseus’ nostos worthwhile in the first place. By choosing to project his
creative powers onto a relationship between a god and a mortal – a relationship marked by
intrinsic uncertainty – the poet expands his nostos narrative into a story of the mystery of
storymaking. In addition, the hints in the narrative that Athena has actually replaced Penelope in
the Ithacan part of the story as known from other existing versions contribute an erotic element
to this mystery and create a dramatic tension between Odysseus and Penelope, while at the same
time preserving their equality.
4. The Nostos Story Contest
70
Charles H. Taylor, in “The Obstacles to Odysseus’ Return,” Essays on the Odyssey…, 98.
The only exception seems to be the myth found in Hyginus and Apollodorus of Athena’s raising Erichtonius, born
as a result of Poseidon’s practical joke on Hephaestus and Athena. See Robert Graves, Greek Myths (London:
Cassel & Company, 1955), 96-8.
71
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Let us return to the beginning the Odyssey:
andra moi ennepe, mousa, polutropon, hos mala polla
planchthê, epei Troiês hieron ptoliethron epersen:
pollôn d' anthrôpôn iden astea kai noon egnô,
polla d' ho g' en pontôi pathen algea hon kata thumon,
arnumenos hên te psuchên kai noston hetairôn.
all' oud' hôs hetarous errusato, hiemenos per:
autôn gar spheterêisin atasthaliêisin olonto,
nêpioi, hoi kata bous Huperionos Êelioio
êsthion: autar ho toisin apheileto nostimon êmar.
tôn hamothen ge, thea, thugater Dios, eipe kai hêmin. (I, 1-10).
Sing to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists and turns
driven time and again off course, once he had plundered
the hallowed heights of Troy.
Many cities of men he saw and learned their minds,
many pains he suffered, heartsick on the open sea,
fighting to save his life and bring his comrades home.
But he could not save them from disaster, hard as he strove—
the recklessness of their own ways destroyed them all,
the blind fools, they devoured the cattle of the Sun
and the Sungod blotted out the day of their return.
Launch out on his story, Muse, daughter of Zeus,
Start from where you will—sing for our time too.72
The first two and the last two lines of the proem frame a summary of a nostos story, which sets
the song’s thematic context: the nostoi of the Trojan War heroes. The opening two lines
characterize the hero of the requested story as polutropos without mentioning his proper name,
the last two lines ask the Muse to begin without suggesting from where. The Muse, as proposed
earlier, starts from the moment at which enough material has accumulated for a story: many
cities have been visited, many pains suffered – there is a lot to tell about. In a broader plan,
however, the accumulation of nostos stories seems to be another reason for this particular point
of beginning. By the tenth year after the end of the Trojan war, a significant number of tales
about the returns of the Achaeans are being transmitted by rumor and sung by the bards. As
Telemachus mentions to Nestor, the fate of all Trojan War warriors except Odysseus’ is already
known (iii.86-8). If Odysseus were dead, there would have been a song about his great fame –
mega kleos (i.240). But as long as his fate remains unknown, songs that spring from fame and
bring fame are suspended. Because it comes last, the song of Odysseus’ nostos finds itself in a
competition with the other nostoi. This challenge suits Athena’s ambition and she accepts it: the
goddess is going to weave the best story. Its superiority will be made obvious by intertwining the
other nostos stories or elements from them in Athena’s majestic web.
From the beginning, it is clear that Athena accepts precisely the challenge of the nostos
theme contest. With Zeus’s blessing for her plan, the goddess goes to the principal setting of the
72
The Odyssey, trans. by Robert Fagles, 77.
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story, Ithaca, and then, in Book V, to its other settings in the realm of Odysseus’ adventures.
Odysseus is fated to return home – consequently, the story begins with the final destination of
his journey. The audience knows almost as much as the cunning goddess does, that is, much
more than its cunning hero himself knows. This, in turn, makes us view the events from
Athena’s perspective rather than from Odysseus’ position. In all that, the Odyssey differs from
the Iliad, whose proem sets its theme but not the thematic context, tells the Muse exactly where
to begin, and keeps the audience uncertain about the end. The Iliad is a story that happens
between the Muse and the bard – this is how its composer has chosen to stylize it. Unlike the
Odyssey, it does not make us aware of other concurrent and competitive stories. Athena’s
gigantic tapestry, on the other hand, presents a meta-nostos narrative that includes the other
nostoi as a background to Odysseus’ return. Just how does the goddess weave the stories
together to show that hers is far the best?
Odysseus’ nostos story is interlaced with four other nostoi. Before Hermes has brought
Zeus’ message to Calypso – before time has begun to run again for Odysseus and his
homecoming has become a possibility – the listeners are already introduced to three other nostoi.
To be sure, the audience is already familiar with them from the nostoi theme context.
Telemachus, too, knows it – both from rumor (iii.83-91) and from Phemius’ songs that make
Penelope burst into tears (i.325-9). But owing to Telemachus’ journey, we can hear the heroes’
personal accounts – a new storytelling pattern that anticipates Odysseus’ Apologoi and modern
subjective narration.
Telemachus first visits Nestor who is known, from the Iliad, as a sweet and lucid speaker
hêduepês and ligus (I.248).73 However, he does not have his own nostos story to tell. After the
end of the war, he luckily returned straight to Pylos. If Odysseus had had the same luck, there
would not be a nostos story about him either. Nestor describes the nostoi context, which he
knows mostly from hearsay: Achilles’ Myrmidons have returned safely; Idomeneus has brought
all his people back; Philoctetes has returned. Agamemnon was slain by Aeghistus immediately
upon his return, but on the seventh year Orestes avenged his father coincidentally about the same
time Menelaus returned from long wandering; Diomedes’ fate remains unclear (iii.184-200).
Seven years after the war, the fates of all heroes but Odysseus were known; and this was when
the suitors started gathering at Penelope’s house.
Prudent, pious, elderly men like Nestor do not make mistakes and, consequently, there is
no material for stories in their lives. Thus, Nestor is admired as a wise man and sweet speaker,
but from the storymaking point, he is interesting only as a counterpoint to reckless heroes such
as Agamemnon or Achilles. This is demonstrated by his vivid account of Agamemnon’s return –
the saddest one and the exact opposite of Nestor’s (iii.254-312). To Agamemnon’s story, Nestor
adds a moral directed specifically to Telemachus: he should not wander too long leaving his
wealth to be devoured by the insolent suitors (iii.313-6).
From the day he married Helen, the most beautiful woman in the world, Menelaus, the
other great hero Telemachus visits, was destined for an “interesting” life that would provide
abundant story material. The story he tells to Telemachus establishes a new pattern that the
Odyssey will develop later: not the bard with the Muse’s aid, but the hero himself telling his own
73
Keith Dickson, in Nestor: Poetic Memory in Greek Epic New York and London: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1995,
64-85, discusses at length Nestor’s storytelling gift as revealed during Telemachus’ visit. Dickson suggests that
Nestor’s tales about the Trojan War emulate the bard’s model, but are “to a large extent situationally dependent,”
that is, intended for Telemachus as a listener, 85. In other words, Nestor is setting a model, rather than just
entertaining Telemachus.
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story (iv.351-569). Menelaus’ tale has elements that occur in Odysseus’ story to the Phaeacians:
Menelaus is kept in Egypt because he has not sacrificed to the gods; he is helped by the nymph
Eidothea who advises him how to outsmart her own father, Proteus, in order to obtain knowledge
inaccessible to a mortal. There is certainly mêtis in Menelaus’ story, but it comes from Eidothea;
the mortal hero just follows her instructions. Within the narrative of the Odyssey, Menelaus’
Egyptian story functions as an introduction to the news that Odysseus is alive and held on
Calypso’s island – a confirmation, in advance, of Odysseus’ own fantastic story-to-be-told.
With regard to the nostos stories interlaced in the Odyssey, there is a symmetry between
Telemachus’ journey to Pylos and Lacedaemon and Odysseus’ journey to the Underworld.
Odysseus has to make this trip not only to learn the prediction of Tiresias about his return home,
which parallels Telemachus’ search for tidings for his father’s return, but also to hear the nostos
stories of the two heroes who, with their quarrel, provided the material for the Iliad. Their
accounts confirm the new pattern of personal storytelling established by Menelaus and
Odysseus.
Achilles traded the possibility of an unheroic return for a heroic non-return. His
memorable statement – that he would rather be alive, even as a servant to some poor man,
instead of being a great dead hero bouloimên k' eparouros eôn thêteuemen allôi, / andri par'
aklêrôi, hôi mê biotos polus eiê, / ê pasin nekuessi kataphthimenoisin anassein (xi.477-503) –
questions the grand message of the Iliad and the meaning of any heroic pursuit. Achilles’ burial,
lyrically described in Book XXIV as an aesthetic event, is his nostos. But this is the kind of
ultimate return that makes it clear to Odysseus that he is better off alive, despite all the suffering
he is going through.
Agamemnon’s own account of his tragic return contributes to the general sense of
meaningless death as the true face of war. Like Achilles’ sad statement, it confirms Odysseus’
skeptical attitude towards the Trojan adventure of the Achaeans. In addition, Agamemnon’s
vivid description of his own pathetic death is instrumental in nourishing the dramatic tension of
Odysseus’ own return. The audience is gradually infused with wariness: at the divine assembly,
Zeus mentions Agamemnon’s story as an example of the mortals' disobedience to the gods (i.2943); the same story is a part of Telemachus’ initiation and education at the houses of Nestor and
Menelaus; Odysseus hears it first-hand from Agamemnon (xi.404-434), and is cunningly
reminded of it by Athena on the shore of Ithaca (xiii.375-85). Agamemnon’s is certainly a great
story, as Aeschylus proved later by his Oresteia, but not the kind of story suitable for the kind of
hero with whom Athena would associate.74
Athena’s ambition as a maker of the Odyssey is to weave the best story: a story richer in
twists and turns than Menelaus’, no less dramatic than Agamemnon’s, and ultimately no less
successful than Nestor’s. How is this achieved, considering how different Odysseus seems to be
from these three heroes? From the Iliad and the Trojan War theme context, the audience knows
that, among the Achaeans, Odysseus is the only polutropos and polumêtis hero.75 However, this
difference does not seem to be strongly emphasized in the Odyssey. Instead, the difference
between the wives of the heroes appears to be the critical one. Penelope is shown as potentially
74
Significantly, Orestes is urged by Apollo and not by Athena to avenge his father’s murder. Athena’s decisive
appearance in the end of The Eumenides aims at introducing order rather than helping a favorite.
75
Diomedes of the Iliad displays cunning comparable with Odysseus’, but the story of his nostos, if it existed, has
not reached us. The reason for this lack of information about Diomedes’ troubles on his way back could be precisely
his similarity to Odysseus. The economy of the nostos context does not allow for two similar stories of twists and
turns.
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similar to her cousins, Helen and Clytemnestra. The suitors’ crowd at her house provokes
associations both with Helen’s many suitors and with Aegisthus, who has replaced the absent
Agamemnon in Clytemnestra’s bed. Such associations are skillfully sustained throughout the
Odyssey in order to be wiped away at the end. The apparent resemblance76 makes the difference
loom large. Agamemnon’s praise of Penelope in Book XXIV confirms – in the absence of
Athena and Odysseus – the success of this subtle juxtaposition, certainly a part of Athena’s
scheme. The bloodshed in Ithaca can be seen as an altered version of Agamemnon’s nostos
story.
hôs agathai phrenes êsan amumoni Pênelopeiêi,
kourêi Ikariou: hôs eu memnêt' Odusêos,
andros kouridiou: tôi hoi kleos ou pot' oleitai
hês aretês, teuxousi d' epichthonioisin aoidên
athanatoi chariessan echephroni Pênelopeiêi,
ouch hôs Tundareou kourê kaka mêsato erga,
kouridion kteinasa posin, stugerê de t' aoidê
esset' ep' anthrôpous, chalepên de te phêmin opassei
thêluterêisi gunaixi, kai hê k' euergos eêisin. (xxiv.194-292)
What good sense resided in your Penelope—
How well Icarius’ daughter remembered you,
Odysseus, the man she married once!
The fame of her great virtue will never die.
The immortal gods will lift a song for all mankind,
a glorious song in praise of self-possessed Penelope.
A far cry from the daughter of Tyndareus, Clytemnestra—
what outrage she committed, killing the man she married once!—
yes, and the song men sing of her with loathing.
She brands with a foul name the breed of womankind,
even the honest one to come!77
Does the reunion between Penelope and Odysseus change the perception of the story of
Helen and Menelaus’ reunion? Telemachus’ visit to Lacedaemon in Book IV gives us a good
opportunity to compare the two couples. Despite the double wedding between Neoptolemus and
Hermione that is taking place when Telemachus arrives, the atmosphere at Menelaus’ palace
seems melancholy: Menelaus’ older brother is murdered, Helen and Menelaus have not had any
more children after Hermione, and to subside the embarrassing memories of the past Helen
needs to use an Egyptian drug (iv.220-8). It is easy to notice that Helen and Menelaus, very
much unlike Penelope and Odysseus, make for a strikingly asymmetrical couple. For one thing,
76
Finally reunited with Odysseus, Penelope speaks about her constant fear of being beguiled by some man and finds
an excuse for Helen’s elopement, which she explains with atê, or a god-sent blindness of the mind xxiii.223.
Curiously, however, she never mentions Clytemnestra. Telemachus does not tell her Agamemnon’s story that he
heard from Nestor. On the other hand, Nestor clearly assumes that Telemachus must have already heard about
Agamemnon’s death iii.193-4 and does not deny it, just inquires about details iii.248. If Penelope knew about
Clytemnestra’s infidelity, why is she silent about it? This silence seems to contribute to the ambivalence of
Penelope’s kleos, as discussed by Marylin A. Katz in Penelope’s Renown.
77
The Odyssey, tr. by Robert Fagles, 474.
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Helen has metis. She immediately spots the young visitor’s likeness to Odysseus iv.138-46, and
she tells a story about her own cunning: how she straightaway recognized Odysseus as he was
spying in Troy in a beggar’s disguise (iv.235-65). Menelaus, in turn, notices the likeness
between his guest and Odysseus only after Helen has pointed to it (iv.148-50). Ironically,
Menelaus’ story about his outsmarting Proteus, the divinity of twists and turns, is told in a
straightforward manner unsuitable for its subject matter.
The reunion of Penelope and Odysseus is not easy either. The relationship between
Odysseus and Penelope, though symmetrical, has been dramatically affected by twenty years of
separation and now needs to be reestablished. But this reestablishment actually means a closure
of the narrative. Or, as Frederic Ahl and Hanna M. Roisman put it, for Odysseus, “to stay with
her [Penelope] would be rhetorical, mythic death – the end of his self-narration.”78 There is not
much space for goddess Athena in the restored harmony between mortal Odysseus and Penelope.
With the calming of the Ithacans – in the likeness of Mentor – Athena has finished
weaving her scheme – her tapestry is now completed. The woof of Odysseus’ story has taken
over the warp of the nostos theme context, of which several threads remain visible: Nestor’s
prompt return, Menelaus’ slow return, Achilles’ non-return, and Agamemnon’s tragic return.
Athena’s storymaking is, indeed, like weaving – she creates a fabric by contrast and inclusion:
the woof of Odysseus’ experience runs crosswise – at the same time opposing and including the
warp threads of the other nostoi. What makes the goddess’ tapestry so enticing is her ability to
improvise with the woof. Ultimately, this woof is the human polutropia. Being herself of many
devices, or poluboulos (xvi.282), an epithet not used for any other god in the Homeric texts,79
Athena is sensitive to the human mêtis and especially to the human aptitude for twists and turns,
best exemplified in the art of storytelling. However, Athena is not a muse – she is a divine
maker. Her image in the Odyssey is that of the ideal plot weaver, capable both of avian
perspective on her design and of perfecting small details.
5. Exit Athena
Athena’s work is finished and laid down in written form by the poet – a meta-nostos story that
includes and triumphs over its own thematic context. To Athena, this is the natural end of the
grand scheme. Tellingly, the goddess never comments on Odysseus’ remaining labor that he
learned about from Tiresias in the Underworld:
all' ê toi keinôn ge bias apotiseai elthôn:
autar epên mnêstêras eni megaroisi teoisi
kteinêis êe dolôi ê amphadon oxei chalkôi,
erchesthai dê epeita labôn euêres eretmon,
eis ho ke tous aphikêai hoi ouk isasi thalassan
aneres, oude th' halessi memigmenon eidar edousin:
oud' ara toi g' isasi neas phoinikoparêious
oud' euêre' eretma, ta te ptera nêusi pelontai.
78
Frederic Ahl and Hanna M. Roisman, The Odyssey Re-Formed (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1996),
274.
79
James H. Dee, The Epithetic Phrases for the Homeric Gods (New York & London: Garland Publishing, 1994), 3,
24.
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sêma de toi ereô mal' ariphrades, oude se lêsei:
hoppote ken dê toi sumblêmenos allos hoditês
phêêi athêrêloigon echein ana phaidimôi ômôi,
kai tote dê gaiêi pêxas euêres eretmon,
rhexas hiera kala Poseidaôni anakti,
arneion tauron te suôn t' epibêtora kapron,
oikad' aposteichein erdein th' hieras hekatombas
athanatoisi theoisi, toi ouranon eurun echousi,
pasi mal' hexeiês. thanatos de toi ex halos autôi
ablêchros mala toios eleusetai, hos ke se pephnêi
gêrai hupo liparôi arêmenon: amphi de laoi
olbioi essontai. ta de toi nêmertea eirô (xi.118-137).
But once you have killed all those suitors in your hall—
by stealth or in open fight with slashing bronze—
go forth once more, you must…
carry your well-planned oar until you come
to a race of people who know nothing of the sea,
whose foot has never seasoned with salt, strangers all
to ships with their crimson prows and long slim oars,
wings that make ships fly. And here is your sign—
unmistakable, clear, so clear you cannot miss it:
When another traveler falls in with you and calls
that weight across your shoulder a fan to winnow grain,
then plant your bladed, balanced oar in the earth
and sacrifice fine beasts to the lord god of the sea,
Poseidon—a ram, a bull and a ramping wild boar—
then journey home and render noble offerings up
to the deathless gods who rule the vaulting skies,
to all the gods in order.
And at last your own death will steal upon you…
a gentle, painless death, far from the sea it comes
to take you down, borne down with the years in ripe old age
with all your people there in blessed peace around you.
All that I have told you will come true.80
In the Underworld, Odysseus does not inquire further about Tiresias’ prediction and he never
discusses it with Athena. However, just after the splendid reunion simile, in which Penelope,
unable to let her arms go from Odysseus’ neck, is likened to a shipwreck survivor who has
finally reached land (xxiii.233-40), Odysseus announces, “Wife, this is not yet the end of our
trials…” (xxiii.248). Then, urged by Penelope, though himself unwilling, Odysseus repeats
almost literally Tiresias’ words. Penelope seems reassured rather than upset. Athena of
Odysseus’ nostos story does not seem aware – or concerned – that soon Odysseus will have to go
on a mission to an unknown land and might need her protection again. This is supposed to be a
80
The Odyssey, tr. by Robert Fagles, 253-4.
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28
pilgrimage that counterbalances Odysseus’ sea adventures – in search of a land so far from the
sea that one might suspect that it does not exist. How does one go there – on foot? How long
would it take – another twenty years?
Tiresias’ prediction is, in fact, the earliest documented rendering of the story of the sailor
who has suffered so much at sea that he is determined to settle in a community that does not
even know of the sea’s existence.81 Odysseus is not expected to settle far from the sea, but,
through this final journey, he is to reconcile himself with Poseidon by making the sea god known
and worshiped inland. Most of the later versions of this story, however, seem to suggest that
either such a community does not exist or the wandering mariner is only temporarily deceived
that he has reached it. How is it going to be with Odysseus?
Athena’s tapestry, perfectly complete as it seems to be, is marked by the peculiar
restlessness of mêtis. A careful eye – especially another poet’s eye – would immediately notice
budding possibilities, emerging patterns.82 There is no need to unweave in order to continue
weaving. One prevailing pattern of this kind is the idea of Odysseus’ second odyssey, inspired
by the vision of his character as an eternal wanderer and seeker of knowledge. Dante gave it
expression in Canto XXVI of Inferno, Tennyson reinforced it in his poem “Ulysses,” Wallace
Stevens elaborated it philosophically in “The Sail of Ulysses.” James Joyce’s Ulysses filled the
familiar structure of the old Odyssey with entirely new material which points to the complex
nature of both the departure point and the return. Nikos Kazantzakis wrote a “modern sequel” to
the Odyssey – more eventful than the ancient story, with philosophical ambitions. Derek Walcott
turned the plot of the Odyssey into a dynamic play in verse, in which few speeches exceed one
line. Charles Frazier’s epic novel, Cold Mountain 1997, adopted the Odyssey’s structure in a
more obvious fashion only to suggest, in the end, that it is impossible to tell the true story of a
war or of one’s return from war, and that a true nostos is possible only in the free land of
imagination. Frazier’s Inman and Ada live a whole life together, imagining it in a long
conversation during the night of their reunion and the few following days. Then, on the fifth day,
Inman is killed.
Cavafy’s poem, “Ithaka,” reconciles the original nostos story, woven by Athena, with the
image of Odysseus as a seeker.83 Keeping far from the ultimate destination while always keeping
it in mind, the poem implies, is the quintessential way of human fulfillment:
As you set out for Ithaka
hope the voyage is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.
…
Arriving there is what you are destined for.
81
See William F. Hansen, Ariadne’s Thread: A Guide to International Tales Found in Classical Literature (Ithaca:
N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2002), 571-8.
82
The character of Odysseus – in ever new turns – appears in Sophocles’ Ajax and Philoctetes, Euripides’ Hecuba
and Cyclops, Seneca’s Trojan Women, Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida, Racine’s Iphigenia, Stanisław
Wyspiański’s The Return of Odysseus, Jean Giraudoux’s Elpénor and La Guerre de Troie n'aura pas lieu, Lion
Feuchwanger’s Odysseus and the Swine, or, Unwelcome Civilization, and Jean Giono’s The Birth of Odysseus.
83
This poetic reconciliation took him awhile: “Ithaka” was written in 1910 and published in 1911. In 1894,
however, Cavafy wrote other Odyssean poems, “Second Odyssey” and “Again in the Same City,” as well as an
article entitled “The End of Odysseus” that seem to be more in the spirit of Dante and Tennyson. See Michael Pieris,
“The Theme of the Second Odyssey in Cavafy and Sinopoulos,” Ancient Greek Myth in Modern Greek Poetry, ed.
by Peter Mackridge (London, Portland, OR: Frank Cass, 1996), 97-108.
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29
But do not hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so you are old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you have gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.84
Cavafy’s poem also acknowledges the ancient composer’s skill to sustain the long voyage
needed both for Odysseus’ human fulfillment and for the story of the Odyssey. In a sense, a
story, like life, is nothing else but postponing the end. Thus, Scheherazade, the mythical
storyteller of A Thousand and One Nights, literally prolonged her life by inventing, every night,
a new story for her husband. By ending her stories in suspense, Scheherazade suspended and
ultimately avoided her own execution.
Thus, in general, the writers’ creative reception of the Odyssey seems to respond to the
ambivalence of Odysseus’ character and to the plot’s structure, but not to the main source of the
story’s mêtis – Athena. In some of the works mentioned above, there is an Athena-like figure
e.g., Ruby of Cold Mountain, who – unlike the goddess Athena – is a helper to Ada-Penelope or
even a divine character called Athena, e.g., in Walcott’s drama, The Odyssey. However, those
Athena-like characters are never assigned the role of a storymaker that Athena has in the
Odyssey. This, of course, could be explained with the modern writers’ interest in psychological
realism, which naturally excludes divine intervention as a motivation and cause of human
actions. But there could be another reason for this exclusion and it is to be found in the
psychology of literary creativity. If the character of Athena in the Odyssey is, indeed, the
projection of its composer’s authorial persona, writers must be aware of its peculiar subjectivity.
While using the abundant material of the Odyssean theme, they seem to intuitively avoid
impersonating Athena’s character. Such impersonation could only lead to a parody or bad
imitation.
T. E. Lawrence invented for himself a poet of the Odyssey that seems more like a literary
character: “a bookworm, no longer young… a mainlander, city-bred and domestic… married,
but not exclusively, a dog-lover, often hungry and thirsty, dark-haired… fond of poetry, a great
if uncritical reader of the Iliad.” If we are to invent the creative mind of the Odyssey’s poet,
however, we should study both Athena and Odysseus as plot-weavers of the epic. Through their
collaboration, this creative mind reveals itself as ambitious and cunning, omnipresent and
capable of manipulating time as if from a position beyond it, deeply familiar with the oral
tradition and aware of its own innovative task at the dawn of written culture, both appreciative
and critical of the Iliad and other Trojan War tales, master of all kinds of tropes, deeply
concerned with the audience’s reception, capable of suspending the ethical for the sake of the
aesthetic, tactfully autobiographical, enjoying the process of storymaking, at times ironic and
flirtatious, androgynous… and with extraordinary creative powers, applying them with the right
measure to achieve the unity around a single action – Odysseus’ homecoming – for which
Aristotle praises the Odyssey.85
84
C. P. Cafavy, Collected Poems, tr. by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University
Press, 1992), 36-7.
85
In his Poetics 1451a, Aristotle points out that the story’s unity is achieved through constructing it not around a
single character’s biography, but around a single action. This means reducing the material only to the elements that
are directly related to the action. Such a creative economy seems to be driving Athena’s exploits throughout the
Odyssey.
29
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30
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[Please send comments and questions to [email protected].]
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